{"id":5074,"date":"2020-04-08T10:53:45","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T09:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/?p=5074"},"modified":"2020-04-29T10:54:25","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T09:54:25","slug":"the-recognition-of-human-suffering-and-staying-home-during-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/2020\/04\/08\/the-recognition-of-human-suffering-and-staying-home-during-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"The recognition of human suffering and staying home during COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018When suffering strikes, the social fabric of our world is torn, and may well be left beyond repair. We are made to\u00a0<strong>endure the unendurable<\/strong>. Yet, one of the more troubling lessons from our history \u2013 and especially the history of modern times \u2013 is that it is often only when we are involved in the\u00a0<strong>collective shock and trauma of a great disaster<\/strong>\u00a0such as the COVID-19 pandemic that we are moved to radically change our\u00a0<strong>attitudes and behaviours<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Great events of human suffering hold the power to\u00a0<strong>arrest our moral attention<\/strong>, and thereby commit us to question the values we live by. By the\u00a0<strong>anguish and pain of such experience<\/strong>, moreover, it is sometimes made impossible for us to ever return to an unthinking acceptance of things as they are. We may now be living in the midst of such times.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It is through painful experiences that entail the most terrible uprooting of life that we are brought under the compulsion to reach out for what\u00a0<strong>really matters in our lives<\/strong>. Many of us are being drawn to do this now and\u00a0<strong>more people are staying at home<\/strong>\u00a0as much as possible. No doubt we shall often feel that our capacity for thinking is exhausted and that any actions that we take \u201cto do some good\u201d are useless. Failure is inevitable; yet it may still be possible for us to fail forward toward better ways of taking account of ourselves and of taking care of others during this time. If there is such a thing as \u201csociological wisdom\u201d to draw for our current predicament, then I hold that it\u00a0<strong>lies in the learning<\/strong>\u00a0that is made possible through our\u00a0<strong>involvement in acts of care<\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><em>Professor\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/social-policy-sociology-social-research\/people\/1403\/wilkinson-iain\">Iain Wilkinson<\/a>\u2019s work concerns a range of issues relating to problems of social suffering. He explores how individuals are socially disposed to interpret and respond to problems of human suffering. He attends to occasions where encounters with the problem of suffering are involved in changing people\u2019s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. This involves him investigating the cultural history of modern humanitarianism and humanitarian social movements.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018When suffering strikes, the social fabric of our world is torn, and may well be left beyond repair. We are made to\u00a0endure the unendurable. Yet, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/2020\/04\/08\/the-recognition-of-human-suffering-and-staying-home-during-covid-19\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59459,"featured_media":5075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5076,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074\/revisions\/5076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}